


No Limits

by akathecentimetre



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:07:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rio doesn't know what to do with his new keeper. More to the point, he already has enough madness to deal with in his life. Set in the 05-06 and 06-07 EPL seasons; originally written for the wonderful Cornerflag zine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Limits

Rio Ferdinand had been perfectly happy with his lot before Edwin came along. He had one of the most coveted defensive positions in the League, he had a spot on the national team so secure he might as well have had his name engraved on a bloody throne at Buckingham Palace, he had a widely acknowledged fuck-pact with a certain David Beckham when the little squeaky-voiced git could be torn away from Gaz and Giggsy. It was a good life, really. It was comfortable, and he took a cocky pride in it.

At first, he was convinced having two Dutchmen around Old Trafford would mean nothing to him except, hopefully, a learning experience. Even on his cockiest of days, he could admit that he was always working to improve, and having a goalkeeper finally worth his fee was a pleasant change. And at first, Rio saw nothing in Edwin van der Sar, lately of Fulham, than a professional teammate and being Ruud’s friend. Being Ruud’s friend meant that he was a good bloke, because Ruud was one, and being Edwin van der Sar meant he was a professional teammate and a top-notch keeper, and Rio was content with that. It was a new voice, a better and far more experienced voice, which yelled at him from between the goalposts, but other than that it didn’t mean much. He still went and fucked with David on occasion, still drove the same car and played on the same teams, and that was good enough.

The realization that Edwin and Ruud were, in fact, not just friends was perhaps a shock, but logical when he looked at it again after the fact. It explained the moaning that he sometimes heard in the showers, for one, which was a convenient explanation for a mystery he had puzzled over for a while. It was nice to have that little matter cleared up, and he thought nothing more of it.

In a way, the first time he really noticed Edwin at all was when Ruud left, because everyone knew it was as though two pieces of a puzzle had been snapped apart. Ruud was gone in a whirlwind to Madrid, to the sun and the money and the end of arguments, and Rio found Edwin in a bar in Manchester a few days later with a tired, accepting smile on his face, as though he were the proverbial Atlas sentenced to hold up the weight of the sky.

“Hey. Y’alright?”

“Yeah,” Edwin said, swirling the dregs of his drink a little. “A bit mad, all of that, wasn’t it?”

Rio just nodded, wincing a little at the memory of Ferguson’s face screwed up and almost purple with anger towards Ruud, a sight he very much hoped would never be directed at him. “Yeah, it was.”

Ed chuckled and finished his drink. “Thanks.”

Rio frowned. “What for?”

Ed stood up from his barstool, tossing a few pounds on the counter. “For agreeing it was mad.”

Rio watched him leave, watched him through a warped window as Ed got into his car and drove off. And he discovered that when they came back from the World Cup and started to train again together, he had begun to notice things.

He had noticed how Ruud held Edwin after the Dutch lost to Portugal, how after a brutal match the sidelined striker had pulled Edwin close as tears ran down his face, a comforting arm around Ed’s waist, their shared image flickering on his TV. At Carrington, he noticed when Ed pointed out some helpful detail to the younger keepers under him, how he trained with the enthusiasm of a man half his age, how he grinned and giggled at the same time and watched, his arms around his outstretched knees, as the non-keepers all ran laps around the pitch, tossing a ball back and forth between his large palms.

He wasn’t sure what to do with these things he noticed. He only knew that he noticed them.

 

 

Rio Ferdinand was not a man who liked things to be complicated. On the pitch, he was loud. Off the pitch, he preferred to be quiet. On the pitch, he ran – off the pitch, he walked. He accepted his nicknames of Dog-face or Skullface with equanimity, knowing that he had been born with a dangerously predatory, skeletal, ludicrous smile and not apologizing for it for a second. He didn’t generally like emotions. He knew that he loved, and he knew that he hated, but he was never too curious about why or how, and he liked it that way, thank you very much.

So when he realized that his attitude – he refused to call it bloody feelings – towards a certain Edwin van der Sar was more complicated than usual, he was more than a little pissed off. Mainly with himself, but also because he wasn’t sure why on earth his brain had decided Edwin was attractive anyway, because he wasn’t. He was too tall, too thin, gangly and pointy-faced. 

But then Rio would find himself watching how the sun glinted off his hair in the training ground sunlight, turning it gold, or how he would turn and look at Rio and smile, the amazing politeness which could instantly transform itself into fierce shouting at Rio’s back, warning him, pointing him in the right direction as he ran. And Rio started to feel that sinking feeling in his chest whenever he saw Edwin, that same sinking that he had felt when he first realized he wanted to fuck Becks, even though with Becks that feeling was long since gone, lost in casualness and nonchalance.

This was nothing like Becks. Becks at least would have been forthcoming about it, about what he wanted and what he knew Rio wanted. But Edwin – Edwin just _looked,_ just _sat_ there with that bloody insufferable little half-grin on his face, calm and just – Edwin-like. He really wasn’t sure how else to describe it, because Edwin just was.

One thing he knew, and that was that Edwin knew. But if Edwin knew that he knew that Edwin knew, then he also knew that Edwin knew Rio knowing Edwin knew meant that Edwin would just pretend he didn’t know that Rio knew that Edwin knew, and _fuck it_ but Rio hated it when his brain got busy enough that it became its own one-man late-night comedy sketch. He didn’t like thinking. He didn’t want to think. He wanted to do, and he wanted to have. Have Edwin, that was it. 

And Edwin _knew_ that. He could see it in every time Ed laughed, every time he quirked an infamous eyebrow or tilted his head during training or ruffled his hair like a nervous schoolboy during interviews, a sweetly corrupting show he _knew_ he was putting on. But what he didn’t know was just how much it affected Rio, how every time it happened Rio had to force himself to breathe normally or literally turn his back to him just to make it stop. 

Sometimes he would sit in his car in the Carrington parking lot and make sure every single car – including Ed’s – left before his so he wouldn’t be distracted by the thought of Ed driving behind him on the road. That would have prompted neck-craning behavior certainly not conducive to safe travel, and he doubted his friends and family would appreciate the cause of death being reported by the police as ‘reckless driving provoked by trying to peer into Object Of Desire’s vehicle to see whether he was nodding his head along to the music on the radio or not in effort to determine what sort of beat gets him moving.’

That fantasy played out to its maximum in his head once in a while. He wondered whether Ed would know, standing at Rio’s funeral, if it was he who had killed him. The thought made Rio laugh, in a morbid, despairing sort of giggle, for a long time.

 

 

The moment when Rio finally admitted he couldn’t just ignore this whole fucking addiction of his occurred on a February afternoon at White Hart Lane, as they played Tottenham under a pale still-winter sun. The game had been going so _well._ They were winning, damnit, they were going to go six points up on Chelsea, they had converted a penalty, Berbatov and his infantile diving hadn’t gotten anywhere, or if they had Edwin had produced fantastic saves.

There were only ten minutes left – _ten fucking minutes_ – when Robbie Keane’s knee smashed across the side and front of Edwin’s head as the onrushing keeper slammed into him. Rio blinked, and in that split second he must have missed something, because Ed was lying spread-eagled on the grass, not moving, while Keane (to his credit, Rio belatedly acknowledged later) stood over him and waved for the medics, his face panic-stricken. And Rio felt as though every square inch of air had instantly deserted his lungs.

_Oh, he’d better not have pulled a Cech. If he’s pulled a Cech I’ll kill the bastard._

He wondered whether this was how JT had felt when he saw Petr go down, when Petr had crawled off the field just a few weeks before, his head hanging low, more like a wounded animal than a man. But no, this was not Petr Cech, because this was _Edwin,_ and Edwin was _not_ going to have a fracturedskullandalmostdielikePetrdidandohgod – 

But the medics were there now and Edwin’s head was in one of their laps, and his eyes were open again – weren’t they? Rio took a step forward and then stopped, letting out a mental scream as he heard Ferguson calling to him, because _oh fuck_ they had used all the substitutes so someone would have to be keeper, and there was Albert the kit-man standing on the sidelines holding out a green shirt and a pair of gloves, to _him,_ to _Rio._

He had been in goal before, when other keepers had been injured or given straight reds – he had had to defend against penalties, and what he remembered most about it was how helpless he had felt. He had felt ridiculous, useless, even different, because the shirt was the wrong color. He remembered how he had felt caged to stay on one line and just walk up and down it or perhaps a few yards in and out, but never more than that. 

He remembered that when he watched his teammates running about at the other end of the pitch he had felt pathetically lonely, and he remembered wondering once whether that was how Edwin felt, week in and week out.

He didn’t want it, he didn’t want to do it. But Edwin was hurt and bleeding, and there _was no one else,_ and why the fuck did life choose to beat up on him, anyway?

Edwin’s shirt was cool and synthetic under his shaking fingers – but no, this wasn’t Edwin’s, because it was clean and new, no blood on it. He tugged it over his head and started to pull a stiff glove onto one hand, knowing that Ed’s would have been supple and sweat-stained, not antiseptic like these – but then Fergie touched his shoulder, was pulling him back, was beckoning to O’Shea, who was pulling his shirt off too. 

Fergie said something about giving it to him, but for a long moment Rio’s arms refused to lift it off his body. But then it was off, and Sheasy was tugging it over his head, and Rio was left holding his own red jersey in his hands.

He turned and saw that Edwin was standing, his head looming out above the crowd of relatively tiny medics clustered around him, green against a sea of black. One of them pulled one of Ed’s arms around his shoulders and started to support him off the pitch as Ed clasped a huge swath of bandages to his face, his limbs limp and eyes half-closed.

Rio very studiously ignored him as he took his place back in the line of defence. The one moment he allowed himself to glance at the sidelines, Ed was looking back at the goal, not quite in Rio’s direction, as though it had just occurred to him that this was a _bad thing_ that they had to resort to Sheasy in goal. 

Rio swallowed and tried to focus back on the match, but it was no use. His concentration was completely gone even though he put up the pretense of running back and forth and being useful, and he had to angrily thank whatever lucky stars there were later that O’Shea was capable enough to do the defending for him, acting not like a keeper at all as he slid feet-first into an attacker, but hey – he got the ball away. Rio apologized to him with his eyes and rushed off the pitch at the final whistle, only to find that Edwin was already gone.

 

 

Two weeks later, Rio’s heart once again leapt into his mouth when a studded boot smashed across Edwin’s fragile face, because the stupid bastard just _had_ to be the hero, _had_ to run out there and try to punch the ball away and of _course_ he was going to end up jostled and on the ground in a tangle of bodies and that boot just had to be _right there_ to follow up on what the knee had done before it. Rio was the one who eventually kicked the ball out of bounds, screaming at the sidelines for someone to get out there because Ed was shaking his head in dismay and spitting blood out onto the grass.

This time, Edwin stayed on the pitch, but he looked even more unnerved when barely a minute after he went back on his line a ball sailed through the defence and straight past him into the net. Rio swore and blamed himself, and berated Edwin for it later.

“Stupid idiot. You should’ve waited another week,” he said roughly, screwing up his face at the sight of Ed’s bruised but thankfully (this time) intact nose, his puffy cheeks.

“Thanks a lot for nothing,” Edwin slurred back, lying back on the dressing room couch, pumped full of enough painkillers that he probably had no idea what Rio had even said. His bloodstained shirt was crumpled up under his head as a makeshift pillow. Rio snorted and got him a real one, gripping the back of his neck firmly as he slid it underneath Ed’s hair, damp from a carefully-taken shower.

“You’re welcome, Dutchie.” A moment later Rio watched, disembodied and horrified, as one of his fingers trailed itself along Ed’s high cheekbones. Ed winced and slapped at him gently with one hand, eyes squinting closed.

“Ah. Ticklish. Don’t make me move m’face.”

Rio giggled despite himself. It took all his willpower to get up then, but get up he did and walked trembling out the door, leaving Ed grumbling on the couch and sleepily tossing his gloves at Rio’s back.

 

 

In the end, it was also on the pitch that Rio finally reached his breaking point. The penalty save Ed made against Manchester City meant the celebrations were wild at the final whistle – Rio ran for Ed, who was standing at the edge of the six-yard box with his hands in the air, jumped on him, shook him, screamed in his face and felt Ed’s hands coming down to grip his shirt and shake him back, his face contorted in a snarl of victorious pleasure.

Rio told him right then, in that split second. And the adrenaline coursed through him stronger than ever when Ed’s eyes said back _yes I know yes I will yes –_

He had to throw Ed away from him, leaving him to his own fist pumping, shirt-throwing celebrations at the goalposts, as he rushed off to jump on someone else, because he was Rio and that was what Rio did, he jumped on people. But the promise of later was enough.

‘Later,’ it turned out, occurred exactly forty-two minutes and thirty-five seconds after they tramped off the pitch in a great whooping, shouting huddle – twenty-nine minutes after Rio got into the shower, seventeen minutes after he got out of it, two minutes and seven seconds after the dressing room was empty, and fifty-four seconds after he turned around and saw that it was in fact not empty, that Ed was sitting on one of the benches in jeans and bare feet, his elbows on his knees and chin on his interlaced fingers, doing that damn tilted-head thing again as he stared at Rio with sparkling eyes.

“You could have just told me out loud, you know. Would’ve made things much easier.”

Rio dropped his boots into his bag and zipped it shut, taking a petty pleasure in making Ed be the one who was now waiting for _him._ “Nah. Wouldn’t want to have deprived ya of all the pleasure you were obviously taking in drivin’ me mad.”

“Oh. Was I?”

“Shut up,” Rio said, and leaned down, and pulled Ed’s head up, and their lips met in the middle.

 

 

“…wait. Your _face?_ Y’ve got a ticklish _face_ now? I thought you were only ticklish _here…_ ”

“Shuddup. Stop, stop – ack! Hee! Rio, stop it! – oh. Wait, no. Dun’ stop that. Tha’s nice.”

“Mmh. Ticklish _face_ …honestly…”

 

 

Sometimes Rio thought he did his job too well. He knew he was bloody good at it, and when he and Vida, bless the great fearsome lummox, were on top of things, there was no chance anything would get past them. It was still ironic, though, that a good day for him meant – not a _bad_ day per se, but a hellishly boring one – for Ed. Often times he would smack a ball out from underneath a striker’s feet off to one side and look up to see Ed smiling at him, ready and prowling his line, but not in the least bit alarmed. 

Other times, when he trotted up to the opposite penalty area, he could look back over his shoulder to the sight of Ed leaning his back against one of the goalposts, flipping his hair out of his face if it was windy, getting a drink, poking out one cheek with his tongue. He liked doing things with his tongue, random things like running it around the inside of his mouth when he was annoyed or sticking it out to one side when he grinned or laughed. On these occasions, it was active in a simply amused capacity, watching the others run around the pitch fully aware he wouldn’t get anywhere near the ball, content to wait and fidget.

They made an unspoken pact. If Ed was kept busy during a match or let goals in because of lapses in the defence, he was allowed to slowly torture Rio with that same tongue as punishment (Rio would never admit to it being anything other than punishment, despite the unbearable urge to let a striker slip by him unchallenged just to get it). If Ed spent a match yawning while Rio and Vida did brilliantly, then it was Rio’s turn to do whatever he wanted as a reward. The system worked well, even though both of them steadfastly refused to admit it even existed.

It worked well for Rio, in particular, precisely because he was so bloody good at his job. And he knew it. He fucking loved it. Times like this, when he hid in the back seat of Ed’s Bentley and then pulled the keeper back to join him, yelping in surprise, from the front seat before he could even stick the keys in the ignition – times like that he loved.

“ _Godver_ , you could have warned me!”

“But that wouldn’t’ve been as much fun,” Rio murmured simply, popping open the top button of Ed’s shirt so he could get his lips at the neck underneath.

“You’re a sneaky bastard,” Ed said back, grinning as he allowed Rio to lay him down on the seat, his head falling back with sensation as Rio’s hands skated down his sides. 

Times when he could still taste the salt of sweat on Ed’s skin, just on the inside of his thigh, because they happened to fall together before they even got to the showers. Times when Ed’s long fingers stroked down Rio’s spine or pushed through his close-shorn hair with his fingernails, making Rio melt and arch like some sort of feral cat. 

Times when he was tired and selfish, just making Ed stand still while Rio pulled bits of clothing off of him one by one, eternally grateful when Ed let him thrust into him with only a perfunctory kiss before his lips and hands dived downward, silently promising that next time he would be better. And the next time he would always be better – he would lie with Ed for hours, would stay with him afterwards so they could sleep tangled up in each other’s arms. 

Other times it was the other way around, when Ed would slam his gloves into a locker in anger at a mistake he had made or a save he had missed, and Rio would hold him with his head pressed to Rio’s chest, being sure not to speak because Ed was the sort who needed to sulk. Days when Rio kicked a ball backwards too hard and it went sailing into his own net, or the time when Ed bounced one in off of Wes, it was one of two extremes – either completely nothing, or angry shoving and blame and silent pounding, a growl or two their only acknowledgment of each other as they fucked. Those times, it was just another body.

Eventually, it would pass. It always did, and then regret and whispered forgiveness would follow, and then it would be back to a lick at the lobe of Rio’s ear, to Rio settling between Ed’s legs, to pushing and pulling and that little laughing gasp Ed always made to let Rio know he could let himself go completely.

 

 

Rio knew that Ed was infinitely older than him. The eight or nine actual years between them didn’t really count – but the difference in their facial expressions when they were handed trophies did. Their different reactions to being given a captain’s armband did. Rio knew from looking at himself in the papers that he looked like a little boy in a candy store whenever something big happened to him, while Ed simply accepted it, knew that he and the team deserved it, and just got on with business.

Rio knew that his reaction to finding out Edwin still shared a room with Ruud at internationals was childish too, and that there, too, Edwin had the advantage of experience on him. The first time he confronted Ed about it, Edwin was so surprised by the idea that it could be a problem that he admitted it right away, leaving Rio gaping like a startled fish that had just discovered it was about to be eaten by a very hungry and gleeful shark.

“Of course we fuck. What about it?”

“And – you think that’s all right, do ya?”

Edwin raised an eyebrow. “…yes?”

“Never mind. I get it, no problem.” Rio stood from the bed, reaching for his trousers as he furiously tried to ignore the fact that his stomach felt like it weighed several kilos more than usual. “Fine. Whatever.”

“Rio.” Ed’s impossibly large hand caught him and pulled him back to lie helpless against Edwin’s bare chest, sprawled uncomfortably across the bed. “When are you going to learn that love doesn’t have any limits?”

Rio lay still for several seconds. “How d’you mean?” he finally asked, fighting the urge to run away before he cried, because Rio Ferdinand did. Not. Cry.

“Hang on, m’trying to think of an analogy,” Ed murmured, nosing Rio’s hair as he trailed a comforting, tortuous finger across Rio’s collarbone. “It’s not like…like it can be bought. There is no stock of it that runs out just because I love more than one, more than once. You have all of me… and so does Ruud.” Ed paused, and Rio could feel him smiling against his scalp. “Now, if we get into a threesome with him, that could be problematic.”

“Fat chance!” Rio burst out, almost hysterical. “Ugh. No. Nono.”

“Well. There you are, then.”

Rio lifted his head and sat up, turning to look Edwin full in the face. “Ed,” he said, deadly serious. “Are you saying you’re an unlimited-ride Underground Travelcard?”

Edwin laughed so hard he fell back helplessly into the pillows, chest shaking uncontrollably, covering his face to try and calm down. And Rio gave in, gave up because he knew he could never let it stop without breaking, and peeled Ed’s hands away himself, replacing them with his mouth, breathing in that laughter.

“Well. No limits?” he muttered several minutes later, when his vision was blurred and Ed was arching, pliant and warm, beneath him. “You sure ‘bout that no limits thing?”

“That’s right. Do your worst,” Edwin whispered back.

“You’re gonna regret saying that, mister.”

“Don’t think so, somehow…”

No. Rio didn’t think so either.

 

**FIN**


End file.
